Blu-ray may be less of a bag of hurt with iTunes support
A rumored update to iTunes may signal that across the board support for Blu-ray is coming to Apple's product line, assuming it proves accurate. In addition to iPhone application organization and social media integration features, iTunes 9 is said to be gaining support for Blu-ray high definition video.
According to a "pretty reliable" source for Boy Genius Report, iTunes 9 will gain the capability to visually organize iPhone OS apps—a process that can quickly become unwieldy if you have loaded more than a couple dozen apps on your iPhone or iPod touch. Also, the new version of iTunes may have built-in capability to send information about the current playing track to popular social media platforms, such as Last.fm, Facebook, and Twitter. But most surprising of all is the revelation that iTunes 9 will have "Blu-ray support."
Exactly what support that would entail isn't specified, though it does seem to align with a recent rumor that suggested that an upcoming iMac redesign would include a long-requested feature, which many speculate means Blu-ray drives. Engadget speculated that the so-called support may just be related to Blu-ray's "Managed Copy" feature, but that still doesn't seem like a handy feature to have without drives to make the copy. Even with third-party drives, Mac OS X still doesn't have the ability to decode and playback Blu-ray video discs.
Last fall, Apple CEO Steve Jobs called Blu-ray's licensing a "bag of hurt," citing licensing and cost as the main reasons Macs weren't equipped with Blu-ray drives. However, even the main HD-DVD supporter, Toshiba, recently announced that it would begin making Blu-ray players and including Blu-ray drives in its notebook computers. Though Apple has bet on a future without optical discs—consider the Apple TV or MacBook Air, for instance—Apple may be conceding that its customers aren't completely ready to abandon them just yet.
